She'd flagged down an officer from the Bomb Squad and, looking at him upside down from her grassy bed, flashed her badge and told him about the tarp-covered object under the seats near the south door. He'd returned to his colleagues inside.

Then the brassy music from the tent had stopped and Edward Kadesky stepped outside.

Watching the Bomb Squad at work, some of the audience realized that there'd been a real threat and that Kadesky's quick thinking had saved them from a worse panic; they offered some impromptu applause, which he'd acknowledged modestly as he made the rounds, checking on his employees and the audience. Other circus-goers—injured and otherwise—were less generous and scowled and demanded to know what had happened and complained that he should have handled the evacuation better.

Meanwhile the Bomb Squad and a dozen firemen had scoured the tent and found no sign of a device. The tarp-covered box had turned out to be cartons of toilet paper. The search expanded to the trailers and supply trucks but the officers found nothing there either.

Sachs frowned. They'd been wrong? How could that be? she wondered. The evidence was so clear. It was Rhyme's way to make bold assumptions about evidence and sometimes, sure, he made mistakes. But in the case of the Conjurer it seemed that all the evidence had come together and pointed directly to the Cirque Fantastique as his target.

Had Rhyme heard that they'd found no bombs? she wondered. Rising unsteadily, she went off in search of someone's radio to borrow; her Motorola, now lying in pieces near the south door of the tent, had apparently been the sole fatality of the panic.

———«»———«»———«»———

Stepping quietly out of the music room in Charles Grady's apartment, Malerick walked back into the darkened hallway and paused, listening to the voices from the living room and kitchen.

Wondering just how dangerous this would be.

He'd taken steps to make it less likely that Grady's bodyguards would panic and gun him down. At his lunch at the Riverside Inn in Bedford Junction two weeks ago, meeting with Jeddy Barnes and other militiamen from upstate New York, Malerick had laid out his plan. He'd decided it'd be best to have someone make an attempt on the prosecutor's life before Malerick's invasion of Grady's apartment today. The universal choice for a fall guy was some pervert of a minister from Canton Falls named Ralph Swensen. (Barnes had some leverage on the reverend but explained to Malerick that he hadn't fully trusted him. So after his escape from the Harlem River yesterday the illusionist had donned his janitor's costume and had followed the reverend from his fleabag hotel to Greenwich Village—just to make sure the loser didn't balk at the last minute.)